Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

Robyn is who I am. Rihanna – that’s an idea of who I am.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

Basically, I live to do gigs.

I always use Michael as, first and foremost, a vocal inspiration, and ‚Off the Wall‘ was definitely the one that made me feel like I could sing.

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

I modelled my looks on the town tramp.

My drive is other people’s success.

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana… plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

The only frustrating thing about jail is that I can’t make music.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

There’s no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

I believe with all my heart that America remains ‚the great idea‘ that inspires the world. It is a privilege to be born here. It is an honor to become a citizen here. It is a gift to raise your family here, to vote here, and to live here.

Now, we are selling over 5 million songs a day now. Isn’t that unbelievable? That’s 58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

I need music. It’s like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what’s going on – bad games, press, whatever!

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

I just kind of wake up with a new idea and new dreams every day, and I follow that dream, as they say.

Genius, when young, is divine.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

Five or six songs leaked from the original version of ‚Encore.‘ So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.

I got a greater purpose. God put something in my heart to get across, and that’s what I’m going to focus on, using my voice as an instrument and doing what needs to be done.

A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.

Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?

If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

There’s something missing in the music industry today… and it’s music. Songs you hear don’t last, it’s just product fed to you by the industry.

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I’ve done for 25 years. I don’t need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

While we may lose heart, we never have to lose hope.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can’t swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it’s what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.

I’m trying to throw a big broad net to try to get people interested in God and believe that He’s for them and has a purpose.

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I’m at mentally.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

I always loved that old song ‚Banks of the Ohio‘ – it was always such a man’s song, so I’ve always wanted to record it.